There’s a specific moment every solo contractor knows: you’re standing in a finished kitchen at 6pm with a tape measure in one hand and a phone in the other, and you still have to turn today’s walkthrough into an estimate before you can eat dinner. The apps below cover that whole loop, from measuring the room to getting the check. Most of them have a usable free version. Only one of them is useless without a subscription, and I’ll tell you which one that is.
Quick Picks
- Best for automatic mileage logging: MileIQ: Mileage Tracker & Log (set it once, forget it, deduct the miles)
- Best for measuring a room: Polycam 3D Scans & Floor Plans (LiDAR scanning that produces real dimensions)
- Best for job math in the field: Construction Master Pro Calc (feet, inches, and fractions that don’t embarrass you)
- Best for fast estimates: Handoff Construction Estimator (build a client-ready estimate from your phone)
- Best for invoicing and getting paid: Joist: Estimate Invoice Maker (estimates, invoices, and card payments in one)
- Best for running the whole business: Jobber Field Service Software (scheduling, dispatch, and invoicing for a team)
- Best for scaling past two trucks: Housecall Pro: Field Service (the deepest feature set on this list)
- Best for jobsite documents: Fieldwire – Construction App (blueprints and punch lists with a free tier)
At a Glance
| App | Best For | Price | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| MileIQ | Automatic mileage tracking | Free (40 drives/mo); Premium $11.66/mo billed yearly | ★4.8 |
| Polycam | Room scanning and measurement | Free; Pro $150/yr or $30/mo | ★4.6 |
| Construction Master Pro | Construction math | Free download, in-app unlock | ★4.8 |
| Handoff | Fast estimates | Free tier, paid plans | ★4.8 |
| Joist | Invoicing and payments | Paid only, from about $10/mo | ★4.8 |
| Jobber | Running a service business | Free app, paid subscription | ★4.8 |
| Housecall Pro | Crews and dispatch | Basic $59/mo billed yearly | ★4.7 |
| Fieldwire | Jobsite plans and punch lists | Free tier for small crews | ★4.8 |
MileIQ — Best for Automatic Mileage Tracking
MileIQ is the only app on this list that earns its place by doing nothing. You install it, it watches your location in the background, and at the end of the day you swipe left on personal trips and right on business ones. That’s the whole product, and it’s worth money because the alternative is a shoebox of gas receipts you’ll never reconcile.
The math is why contractors keep it. Every mile driven between jobs is deductible at the IRS standard mileage rate, which the agency republishes every year, and a two-truck operation burns through thousands of them annually. If you’re new to this, our breakdown of the Everlance vs MileIQ vs Hurdlr mileage trackers covers how the three handle classification differently, and it’s worth reading before you pick one, since switching later loses your history.
Here’s the limitation, and it’s a real one: the free tier caps at 40 drives a month. That sounds generous until you’re doing six or seven site visits a day. The other catch is that automatic detection sometimes misses short hops, so a supply run to the hardware store two blocks away can vanish. The fix is a manual entry, which takes about four seconds and which you will forget to do.
Pricing: Free for 40 drives per month. Premium is $11.66/month billed yearly, or $13.99/month billed monthly.
Download MileIQ | Developer Website
Polycam — Best for Scanning a Room Accurately
This is the app that replaces the tape measure for anything bigger than a closet. Walk the room, sweep your phone, and Polycam produces a measured floor plan with wall lengths you can pull dimensions off. For kitchen and bath work, where the estimate lives or dies on whether the vanity actually fits, that’s hours saved.
The thing nobody tells you: only the Pro models have the hardware that makes this accurate. Apple’s own iPhone 18 Pro tech specs list a LiDAR Scanner in the sensor array. The iPhone Air spec page does not list one at all. So if you’re carrying a standard or Air model, you’re scanning with photogrammetry alone, which works but drifts on long walls and hates blank drywall and direct sunlight. Most articles on this topic tell you every iPhone is a LiDAR scanner. That’s wrong, and it changes which app you should be using.
If floor plans are central to your business rather than a nice extra, our MagicPlan vs CubiCasa comparison for realtors goes deeper on dedicated floor plan tools than Polycam’s scan-to-plan flow does.
Pricing: Free with limited processing. Pro is $150/year (about $12.50/month) or $30/month billed monthly. Business is $400/year per user. Enterprise is $1,200/year per seat with a three-seat minimum.
Download Polycam | Developer Website
Construction Master Pro Calc — Best for Job Math
Calculated Industries has been making construction calculators since the 1980s, and this is that calculator with a screen that doesn’t wash out in sunlight. It adds feet, inches, and fractions the way a carpenter does, so 7 feet 4 and 3/8 inches minus 2 feet 11 and 3/4 inches comes out right on the first try instead of becoming a decimal you then have to convert back.
The feature that justifies the icon on your home screen is the rafter and stair solver. Type in your rise, run, and pitch, and it hands back the common rafter length, hip and valley lengths, and the cut angles. Unless you do this every week, you’re looking it up in a table or trusting a phone calculator that doesn’t understand a framing square.
Two honest complaints. The interface is dense and dated, and the buttons are small enough that fat-fingering a dimension is easy when your hands are cold. And the app is a free download with the useful functions behind an in-app purchase, so expect to pay to unlock the thing you actually came for. Calculated Industries doesn’t publish that unlock price on the App Store listing, so check the in-app prompt before you commit.
Pricing: Free download with in-app purchase to unlock the full calculator. Unlock price not published in the App Store listing.
Download Construction Master Pro | Developer Website
Handoff — Best for Building an Estimate Fast
Handoff is the smallest app on this list in terms of install base and the most interesting one in terms of what it’s trying to do. It’s built by 1Build, which maintains a construction cost database, so the estimate you build in the app can be priced against regional material and labor costs rather than your memory of what a sheet of drywall cost last spring.
In practice you walk the job, add line items as you go, and send a clean PDF before you’ve left the driveway. Speed matters more than polish here. The contractor who sends an estimate the same evening wins a surprising share of jobs against the one who sends it Friday.
The trade-off is that Handoff is a smaller product with a thinner iOS review history than the others here, and its cost data is only as good as the regional coverage where you work. In a rural market, expect to override more line items by hand. It’s also the app most likely to change its pricing structure, since the company is young and the free tier has moved before.
Pricing: Free tier available, with paid plans for higher volume. Specific plan prices are not published on a public pricing page.
Download Handoff | Developer Website
Joist — Best for Invoicing and Getting Paid
Joist does the unglamorous half of contracting: turning an agreed price into an invoice that gets paid. You build the estimate, the client approves it in the app, and it converts to an invoice with one tap. Card and bank payment options are built in, which matters because “the check is in the mail” is not a payment method you can deposit.
The client approval flow is the part worth paying for. When a homeowner taps approve on their phone, you have a timestamped record of what was agreed, and change orders stop being a verbal argument at the end of the job.
Now the correction, because this is the single most out-of-date claim about Joist on the internet. Joist retired its free plan. Its pricing page lists paid tiers only, with the cheapest running about $10/month billed monthly, or $8.34/month if you bill annually. Every older article that still recommends Joist as “the free invoice app” is sending you into a paywall. If free is a hard requirement, Joist is not your app.
Pricing: Paid only. Tiers start at about $10/month billed monthly, or $8.34/month billed annually. There is no free plan.
Download Joist | Developer Website
Jobber — Best for Running the Whole Business
Jobber is what you graduate to when the calendar in your head stops working. Requests come in, you quote them, they become jobs, jobs get scheduled onto a calendar your crew can see, and the whole thing invoices itself when the work is marked complete. Client reminders and follow-ups go out without you typing them.
The reason to choose Jobber over the cheaper options is the scheduling layer. If you’re running two or three vans, the cost of a double-booked morning is higher than the subscription, and a shared calendar with route context prevents most of those. If scheduling is your specific pain rather than invoicing, our roundup of the best work schedule apps for iPhone covers lighter tools that cost less than a full field service platform.
The honest downside: Jobber is the app on this list with the steepest learning curve, and the setup requires you to enter your services and pricing structure before it becomes useful. A one-person operation doing two jobs a week will find it heavy. Their site is behind a bot wall at the moment, so I couldn’t confirm current tier pricing, and I’m not going to guess at it. Check `getjobber.com/pricing` before you sign up.
Pricing: Free app with a paid subscription. Tier prices not verified at time of writing.
Download Jobber | Developer Website
Housecall Pro — Best for Crews and Dispatch
Housecall Pro is the deepest platform here and the one built most obviously for a business with employees rather than a person with a truck. The dispatch board is the centerpiece: jobs on the left, technicians across the top, drag to assign. Add online booking, automated review requests, and a customer database that remembers the last time you were at the address.
The feature that surprises people is the built-in consumer financing. For HVAC, roofing, and anything with a five-figure ticket, being able to offer a homeowner monthly payments on the spot closes jobs that would otherwise go to whoever could.
The catch is price and commitment. It starts at $59/month billed yearly, and the things that make it interesting sit in higher tiers. You also deal with annual billing to get that rate. At $79/month month-to-month, a solo operator doing light handyman work will not get the money back.
Pricing: Basic $59/month billed yearly, or $79/month billed monthly. Essentials $149/month billed yearly, or $189/month billed monthly. MAX $299/month billed yearly, or $329/month billed monthly, with eight users included and $35/month for each additional user. Two-week trial available.
Download Housecall Pro | Developer Website
Fieldwire — Best for Jobsite Plans and Punch Lists
Fieldwire solves the problem that shows up once a job has more than one trade on it: nobody is looking at the same set of drawings. Load the PDF plans, and everyone on the crew sees the current revision on their phone, with markups and notes attached to specific locations instead of living in a group text.
The punch list tool is the quiet win. You walk the job, drop pins on defects, assign them to a trade, and photograph each one as you go. The list builds itself, and the closeout documentation at the end of the project is already done. If you’re managing a renovation with multiple trades, our roundup of apps for managing your home covers the homeowner side of the same coordination problem.
Fair warning: Fieldwire is owned by Hilti and aimed at commercial work, which shows in the interface. It assumes you know what a submittal and an RFI are. For a two-person residential crew, the free tier is genuinely useful and the paid tiers are more than you need. Their pricing page is a per-team calculator rather than a published rate card, so the paid tiers are quoted rather than listed.
Pricing: Free tier for small crews and a limited number of active projects. Paid tiers are quoted per team.
Download Fieldwire | Developer Website
Which One Should You Pick?
If you’re a solo handyman doing a mix of small jobs, start with three: Construction Master Pro for the math, Joist for the invoicing, and MileIQ for the miles. That’s about $20 a month plus a one-time unlock, and it covers the entire loop from measuring to getting paid.
If you’re a remodeler doing kitchens and baths, add Polycam and drop the tape measure for anything over six feet. The measured plan is also the best sales tool on this list, because showing a homeowner a dimensioned floor plan reads as competence.
If you’re running a crew, the question is scheduling. Jobber is lighter and cheaper; Housecall Pro has more depth and costs more. Pick Jobber under four technicians and Housecall Pro above it, and don’t switch twice.
And if you’re working commercial jobs with drawings, Fieldwire on the free tier will beat whatever system you’re using now.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need an iPhone Pro for room scanning to work?
It depends how accurate you need to be. LiDAR is exclusive to the Pro models and the iPad Pro, which Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro specifications confirm. Polycam works on any recent iPhone using photogrammetry, but accuracy drops on long distances, blank walls, and in bright sunlight. For a bathroom vanity, it’s fine. For a whole-house floor plan you intend to bid from, a Pro model or a dedicated laser measure is the safer call.
Is there a genuinely free contractor estimating app in 2026?
Yes, but fewer than there used to be. Handoff and Fieldwire both have free tiers, and Polycam’s free version handles occasional scans. Joist is the notable loss: its free plan is gone, and its cheapest tier runs about $10/month billed monthly. If free is a hard requirement, Joist is out.
How accurate are iPhone room scans for estimating?
Close enough for quoting, not close enough for ordering materials without a check. Polycam on a LiDAR-equipped phone typically lands within an inch or two on walls in a normal room. Errors accumulate over long sightlines and in rooms with mirrors, windows, or clutter, so verify the two or three dimensions your job actually depends on with a tape before you commit to a number.
Can I invoice and take payment from the same app I estimate in?
With Joist, yes: estimates convert to invoices with one tap, and card and bank payment options are built in. Jobber and Housecall Pro do this too, along with scheduling and follow-ups, at subscription prices. Handoff and Construction Master Pro stop at the estimate, so you’ll need a separate payment tool.
Do any of these apps sync with QuickBooks?
Jobber and Housecall Pro both push invoices and payments to QuickBooks Online, which is the main reason to pick them over cheaper standalone tools once your bookkeeping gets complicated. Joist offers accounting exports. MileIQ exports mileage as a report you can hand to a bookkeeper, and it’s designed to feed into tax preparation rather than a live ledger.
The Bottom Line
The gap between a busy contractor and an overwhelmed one is usually administrative, not technical. Measuring a room properly, pricing it with math that holds up, and invoicing the same day are three habits that these apps make almost automatic.
Our pick: MileIQ. It’s the most-reviewed app on this list, at 4.8 stars across more than 113,000 ratings, the free tier covers a light month, and it’s the only app here that pays for itself in the first week through mileage deductions you’d otherwise never claim.
If you only install two things today, make them MileIQ and Construction Master Pro. Those two cover the miles and the math, and both work on the phone in your pocket right now.
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